The Light Fantastic

Exciting times ahead! We’re about to put our house on the market and move to a village location with even more garden 😀 I’ve put a lot of work into the house & garden, a lot of the garden projects I can take with me & the effort I’ve put into the house will hopefully tempt a buyer. My blog is going to be packed with new projects when we find our next dream home! 

I’ve got a current obsession with homemade lamps. Here’s a few recent ones made from just vases or glass bowls I had and fairy lights. It does pain me a bit to use batteries (the materials are not ethical) so my compromise is to use rechargeable ones. Apparently Phillips come out top on ethical sourcing.

This is a water lamp, a bowl filled with glass beads, random bits of jewellery & lotsa marbles! It changes colour too.. see the video 😀

Mesmerising eh!

Here’s  some more. 

To increase our kerb appeal I’ve made a new house number sign with the pebeo paints (each project I’m learning better ways to use them) Shame I can’t take this with me but it’s good practice for the new house number, unless by some freak coincidence it happens to be 59 again 😂

Finally here’s a pic of my kitchen where I put a curtain up to hide my shoe & storage area, wish I’d done that years ago! 

Thanks for reading 😀

Fantasy Paints & dressmaking

I’ve been playing around with the pebeo paints and progressing with my techniques. First a bit of furniture upcycling....

I was given  these office furniture cabinets a few years ago ..see a timescale theme going on here 😂 And finally got round to revamping them as my bedside cabinets.

First I gave them a few coats of Matt white paint then used the same pour and tilt method with the pebeo as I did on the greenhouse panel here’s the results 

 

I think they look better close up, if I do a pour & tilt again it will be as a painting to be viewed at eye level. Overall I am happy with my Fantasy bedside cabinets they are certainly unique!

 I went back to the glass panels & this time I used the relief tube paint on a book of flowers to get my outline. Then I used droppers and lolly sticks to carefully apply the different paints & then watch the magic effects happen .  

Still waiting for it to harden off and then I can put in the green house. I’m well happy with it & it was really fun and relaxing to do.

Ok 3rd project was a quick make last night. I brought this skirt and only wore it once as I wasn’t happy with the shape of it. So I made a skirt & top for my granddaughter as her holiday outfit. All done by guesswork I hope it fits! I have a back up altering plan if not though. 😀

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curly carrots, clay & a cool coat

This morning some of my carrots were showing their heads so pulled a few out...

Hmm rather knarly!!

After a clean up and grated into a salad you'd never know ;-)

Hehe hilarious!

Curly carrot, lettuce cucumber & clementine salad for lunch today :-) I'm saving the tops to make a carrot top & mint pesto tonight. On researching the curious shapes of my harvest I discovered 2 mistakes - the first i suspected was not deep enough soil in my no dig, they probably hit the cardboard layer before it had decomposed. However I also discovered you should always seed carrots and thin where they are going to grow, which i didn't! i bought them in trays ready grown to transplant and seems i may have left them too long before it did. Lesson learned !

Yesterday I had the sheer delight of having my Grandaughter round to play. I remembered i had some self hardening clay (NewClay) in the shed. The amazing thing about it is that i bought this nearly 20 years ago and my children played with it! It was still usable and we had fun making hearts and decorating them with leather tool stamps (which i also had in a drawer somewhere) We're going to paint them next week :-)

Now for the coat story...A couple of years ago I saw a really gorgeous coat on Pinterest. I thought hey I could make one like that! So I did. I used a denim jacket from a charity shop, cut the bottom third off and then made a skirt to attach from a few dresses & skirts that i wasn't wearing anymore. I love this coat because its a 100% upcycle, as in i didn't have to buy anything to make it. I also love swanking about in it which i will do today :-)